Mt Rugby Climb Instructions

Mt Rugby, Bathurst Channel TAS

Mt Rugby Climb START

Mt Rugby 1st Ridge

Bathurst Harbour

Climbing Mt Rugby is a challenging excursion with 2,534 feet (or 772m) of vertical-up and is not for the fainthearted. On a good day, the view from the top is one of the finest in Tasmania, if not the world.

Leave the dinghy at the beach in the little cove across the channel from, and NE of, Iola Bay. Head NW and pick up the track along the top of the razor back ridge leading you N up to the first saddle. NOTE that this part of the track is quite steep, slippery and treacherous – especially when tired legs are returning downhill. Like most such tracks in SW Tasmania they are kept open by passing wombats. Parts of this are more like a knee-high tunnel so you cannot see your feet – they have to be put one in front of the other, not side by side.

From the saddle, the route turns NW around and through some rocky outcrops. Once through them, in dry summer weather, under a very large boulder you will find the last accessible fresh water. From here the route sidles round the E face of the mountain and the summit is approached from the NE. The last hundred (vertical) feet is around, over and through a mass of boulders and brush-filled cracks.